Canyons of the Ancients National Monument: Rock Art

A cairn found in Cohab Canyon, Capitol Reef National Park.

Frank and Anne's Canyon Country Hiking and Camping Notebook.

Canyons of the Ancients National Monument

Campsite

Ancient Ruins
and Rock Art

From the Painted Hand Pueblo Ruins, Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, Colorado.

This page contains a discussion of the rock art found at the Painted Hand Pueblo Ruins Site within the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument. All photographs are from our our personal collection. If you'd like to see more rock art from this location, or if you'd like to see higher resolution or larger images, send us an e-mail message and we'll see what we can do.

Rock Art

Painted Hand Pueblo Ruins Site

For more information on how to preserve and protect these priceless historic treasures:

See American Antiquities Act of 1906.
See Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979.
Archaeological Resources Protection Act Hotline: 800-227-7286.
See Archaeological Site Etiquette

There are not many examples of petroglyphs and pictographs at this site, and they seem scattered across several surfaces. As you can see, most of the images are somewhat faded and difficult to photograph. But I believe you can see enough from these images to at least get an idea of what they show.

The main image on this page shows two white impressions of painted hands; probably the name sake of this site. All of the hand prints from this site seem to be under overhangs or in association with ruins of one type or another. These two hand prints probably used the technique of painting the hand and then applying the painted hand to the surface.

The image immediately above appears to be a zoomorph; possibly a lizard, with raised front legs showing three toes or fingers.

	This group of hands used the outline technique of application. Paint may have been blown from the mouth along the edges of the hand as it rested against the stone. As you can see, this group is badly faded.

On another sandstone surface we found this little figure, which could be either an anthropomorph or a zoomorph. Because it is so weathered it is hard to tell. It has three toes on the lower appendages, but the short "tail" may actually indicate that this is a male anthropomorph.

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More Rock Art

All of these photos have been resized and manipulated in Photoshop to give the best representation of the image. Some color distortion is inevitable. If you would like to see higher quality versions of these shots, or if you would like to use these images for any purpose, please contact us and we would be glad to help if we can.

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This page was last updated Monday, July 14, 2008

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